7:17pm EDT, Thu Sep 2

Can 100 Mbps Be Squeezed from Copper Wires?

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: October 14, 2006

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For today's consumer, there's never enough broadband speed and capacity. Movies like those that Apple and Amazon have started hawking take upwards of two hours to download. Folks might as well drive to Blockbuster. And now consumers have started wanting to upload videos - to share with friends and family, and also to video- sharing sites like Youtube. The telcos face two choices: Pull fiber optic cable to or near to every residence or try to squeeze more capacity out of existing copper wires. There's a lot of copper wire still in the ground. A lot. And, there's a lot of cost ahead for the phone companies to deploy a fiber cable to every home. Can more speed and bandwidth be wrung out of the existing copper wire-based phone infrastructure - more even than the latest DSL technology called VDSL that AT&T (but not Verizon), European and Australasian telcos are already deploying? ECI Telecom has formed a new consortium whose objective is to develop technology that'll get more speed and bandwidth out of those existing copper wires than DSL technology did. It's second- generation DSL, but called "Dynamic Spectrum Management" (DSM). Israel-based ECI says DSM is a promising technology that is "expected to provide reliable, fiber-optic-like rates over the existing copper infrastructure." If it does, then DSM will have a significant impact on the market, as the DSL industry is looking for solutions beyond VDSL2, DSL's most current iteration, to increase subscriber broadband rates. Expectations are that speeds over copper could reach 100 Mbps to the home by tinkering with the way that signals and packets are processed and transferred, according to Engadget. That would result in the telcos saving billions of dollars. Verizon alone has committed to spending upwards of $22 billion to run a fiber optic wire to every home. AT&T is in the process of running an optical cable into existing neighborhoods, then using VDSL2 gear to send signals over copper wire for the final run to the home - the so-called last mile. DSL Technologies ADSL2+ uses a 2.2MHz channel to send data at rates up to 24 Mbps. It's more robust than other technologies at distances that are further from the telephone exchange. It's superior to ADSL at distances up to about 10,000 feet from the exchange. VDSL2 is the most advanced of the DSL technologies. It uses a 30MHz channel to send data at speeds up to 100 Mbps but only at distances less than 1,000 feet (roughly 300 meters). After about 1,000 feet, its signal declines rapidly from 100 Mbps to about 25 Mbps-35 Mbps for 3,000 feet-4,000 feet. VDSL2 is the technology that AT&T is using to "soup up" the "last mile" of existing copper wire. That's the distance between the home and the end of the fiber optic cable that runs from the telephone exchange to the neighborhood (node). Nodes are fiber-fed cabinets located near the customers' residences. Using VDSL2 substantially reduces the cost of deploying a fiber network all the way to the home but, alas, limits the bandwidth. And lots of bandwidth is needed for multiple streams of the high- definition television that US TV viewers have begun demanding. The telcos need the bandwidth because the cablecos have begun taking away the telcos residential phone business. The four major US Bellcos lost over two million residential accounts in the second quarter of this year alone. The only way for the telcos to fight back is to offer bandwidth intensive pay-TV and higher speed broadband. All indications are that Verizon appears to have its FiOS TV service up and working, at least in areas where it's run the cables and received local authority approvals. It even held a snappy and detailed analyst meeting last week that detailed its accomplishments, plans and cost structure. On the other hand, AT&T, which is deploying a hybrid fiber/copper network, has fallen strangely silent about its U-verse fiber-based IPTV service. AT&T was expected to be much further along in its IPTV deployment. Unconfirmed speculation is that Alcatel and Microsoft, which supply IPTV technology to AT&T, may have encountered unexpected glitches. DSM ECI is leading the DSM consortium. Other members include Spanish telco Telefonica, Israeli phone company Bezeq and equipment vendors Actelis, RIT Technologies and Amethist as well as academic institutions such as the Technion, Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University. The group is funded with a grant of €8 million ($10 million) over the next three years and is being financed by the chief scientist office of the Israeli government. "The main obstacle for the advancement of DSL technology is the interference ('crosstalk') generated from different DSL lines that share the same telephone cable binder," said John Cioffi, professor of engineering at Stanford University and a pioneer of DSM research who is also recognized as the inventor of the DMT line code. "DSM is a promising technology for the future evolution of broadband access networks using existing copper infrastructure." "DSM is the next step in the evolution of telcos' access infrastructure. It will allow telcos to provide high-bandwidth services cost-effectively by leveraging FTTC topologies rather than replacing all copper wires with fiber-optics until the subscriber premises (FTTH)," said Zvika Weinshtock, VP of marketing at ECI Telecom's broadband access division. "We are proud to be leading the vision and development of this consortium for DSL technology and working together with other industry and academia members to better our technological expertise and competitiveness in the global DSL market." ECI Telecom presented a discussion on DSM and the Consortium at the Broadband World Forum in Paris this week.